Commentary: Convincing a court to rethink redistricting

Amanda Holt is Pennsylvania’s Erin Brockovich, albeit with a more conservative wardrobe and less swearing.

The 29-year-old from Allentown almost single-handedly convinced the state Supreme Court to do what it has never done before: Reject the redistricting maps.

The court's opinion singles out Holt for showing that "the Legislative Reapportionment Commission could easily have achieved a substantially greater fidelity to the mandates in [the state constitution] — compactness, contiguity, and integrity of political subdivisions, yet the LRC did not.

Submitted photoAmanda Holt, 29, of Allentown convinced the state Supreme Court to reject the redistricting maps.

She did all this with no formal legal or statistical training. She has not even graduated from college.

“I’m extremely excited with the ruling,” Holt said when reached at her home Friday a few hours after the Supreme Court released its full opinion.

Holt didn’t set out to take down veteran lawmakers and become the face of redistricting reform.

Nor is she politically motivated. People keeping asking her if she wants to run for office, but she quickly says, “No way.” She is a Republican committeewoman, but she took on this project without thinking about parties.

This whole journey began for her around the time of the 2010 elections. She was out with friends. They were trying to be educated voters and compare notes on candidates when they realized that despite living very close to each other, they were represented by different people in the state House and Senate.

She found the part of the state constitution that states clearly, “Unless absolutely necessary no county, city, incorporated town, borough, township or ward shall be divided in forming either a senatorial or representative district.”

As the latest redistricting process unfolded, she wanted to ensure that lawmakers kept that part of the constitution in mind this time around.

She testified at several of the public hearings, urging lawmakers to follow the constitution. She comes across as polite and soft-spoken. During one of her testimonies, lawmakers even asked her to get closer to the microphone.

But she felt she could do more. Holt makes her living as a part-time piano teacher and graphic designer. One day, she decided to download the 2001 district maps and open them in Adobe Illustrator, a common graphics program.

She started playing with the lines, challenging herself to draw districts based on the constitution’s principles.

It took her weeks, becoming another job.

“I found there seemed to be a way to do this in a manner that more closely adhered to our constitution. I was eager to share this information with the commission. They had all spoken of wanting to make this a more transparent and open process,” Holt said. She even set up a website to educate others at amandae.com.

She came up with a state House map that broke seven fewer counties, 81 fewer municipalities and 184 fewer wards than the map the Legislative Reapportionment Commission made.

For the Senate, Holt’s map had seven fewer county breaks, two fewer municipal breaks and 22 fewer ward breaks than the commission’s.

And that’s before anyone even looks at some of the curious shapes of the commission’s districts. Even the Supreme Court felt the need to point out some particularly egregious ones, such as the “crooked finger” (Senate District 35), the “wishbone” (Senate District 3) and the “iron cross” (Senate District 15).

Many government reform groups have taken the Supreme Court’s ruling as evidence redistricting should be taken entirely out of the hands of lawmakers and done by an independent commission or even a computer.

That’s not how Amanda Holt sees it.

“It’s important to me — more important than creating new rules is to follow the rules we already have,” she said. “If we abide by the constitution, it will go a long way toward creating less controversial maps.”

The commission must now redraw the state House and Senate maps. It’s likely that the Harrisburg area (among others) won’t be as chopped up this time. For that, we can thank Holt.

She was the watchdog from Allentown that Pennsylvania’s most senior lawmakers with all their expertise and connections clearly weren’t prepared for.

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Amanda Holt came up with a state House map that broke seven fewer counties, 81 fewer municipalities and 184 fewer wards than the map the Legislative Reapportionment Commission made.

For the Senate, Holt’s map had seven fewer county breaks, two fewer municipal breaks and 22 fewer ward breaks than the commission’s.